The strong growth in demand for portable consumer electronics is driving the need for high-capacity storage devices. Non-volatile semiconductor memory devices, such as flash memory storage cards, are becoming widely used to meet the ever-growing demands on digital information storage and exchange. Their portability, versatility and rugged design, along with their high reliability and large capacity, have made such memory devices ideal for use in a wide variety of electronic devices, including for example digital cameras, digital music players, video game consoles, PDAs and cellular telephones.
While many varied packaging configurations are known, flash memory storage cards may in general be fabricated as system-in-a-package (SiP) or multichip modules (MCM), where a plurality of die are mounted and interconnected on a small footprint substrate. The substrate may in general include a rigid, dielectric base having a conductive layer etched on one or both sides. Electrical connections are formed between the die and the conductive layer(s), and the conductive layer(s) provide an electric lead structure for connection of the die to a host device. Once electrical connections between the die and substrate are made, the assembly is then typically encased in a molding compound which provides a protective package.
A cross-sectional side view and a top view of a conventional semiconductor package 20 are shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 (without molding compound in FIG. 2). Typical packages include a plurality of semiconductor die, such as flash memory die 22 and controller die 24, affixed to a substrate 26. A plurality of die bond pads 28 may be formed on the semiconductor die 22, 24 during the die fabrication process. Similarly, a plurality of contact pads 30 may be formed on the substrate 26. Die 22 may be affixed to the substrate 26, and then die 24 may be mounted on die 22. All die may then be electrically coupled to the substrate by affixing wire bonds 32 between respective die bond pad 28 and contact pad 30 pairs. Once all electrical connections are made, the die and wire bonds may be encapsulated in a molding compound 34 to seal the package and protect the die and wire bonds.
In order to most efficiently use package footprint, it is known to stack semiconductor die on top of each other, either completely overlapping each other with a spacer layer in between adjacent die, or with an offset as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. In an offset configuration, a die is stacked on top of another die so that the bond pads of the lower die are left exposed. An offset configuration provides an advantage of convenient access of the bond pads on each of the semiconductor die in the stack.
As semiconductor die become thinner, and in order to increase memory capacity in semiconductor packages, the number of die in the die stack of a semiconductor package continues to increase. One problem this presents is that when a single die fails during test of the die stack, the whole die stack is typically discarded. It becomes important to improve yield in order to make large die stacks worthwhile.